Monday, January 26, 2015

A Duke University-led study questions the reliability of the climate models used to project short-term swings in temperature and the future extent of warming.

Patrick Brown, a Duke doctoral student in climatology, and two coauthors analyzed 34 models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its most recent report, completed in November.

Most of the models probably underestimate how much surface temperatures change from decade to decade, says the study published last week in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The models also don't consistently explain why they vary, it says.

That means too much emphasis shouldn't be placed on recent temperature trends, the study warns.

"The inconsistencies we found among the models are a reality check showing we may not know as much as we thought we did," Brown said in a Duke release. He added that the findings don't mean the planet won't warm as greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere.

"It just means the road to a warmer world may be bumpier and less predictable, with more decade-to-decade wiggles than expected.... Don't assume that the reduced rate of global warming over the last 10 years foreshadows what the climate will be like in 50 or 100 years."

Global surface temperatures rose quickly in the 1980s and 1990, but have stayed relatively stable since then.

The National Climatic Data Center in Asheville reported that surface temperatures in 2014 were the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880. Nine of the 10 warmest years in that 135-year span have occurred in this century.

Martin's coauthors were Wenhong Li of Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Shang-Ping Xie of the University of California San Diego.

Garth Vader: No, the earth was not warmer during the Middle Ages. There was a period of time AD 950-1250, when it is believed there where several regions around the world that experienced higher temperatures. However, the studies indicate GLOBAL temperatures didn't come close to what we're experiencing today. You need to include evidence which shows that, during this same time, areas of the world experienced colder than normal temperature.

Additional studies have found several causes including: 1) Fewer volcanic eruptions and changes in the ocean circulation patterns that warmed areas like the North Atlantic.

Garth, your pathetic attempt to use half-truths to back up your claim is embarrassing.

Somebody tell "Viking" idiot that poster #1 on the money only repeating what Duke just admitted thus making all these democrats as bogus liars starting with Al Gore the #1 idiot down to all time idiot Obama who lies when he moves his lips. Who the hell was around 1000 yrs ago to say what the temp was anyway?

Anon@ 2:27pm - It's clear you don't have a clue as to how scientific studies are presented and debated. Their peers will review the information, compare it to other studies, possibly challenge their findings.

Their studies do expose some interesting points, but it is not proof of that climate change is a fluke.

Something all of the "climate change is a hoax" folks have yet to explain is who exactly benefits from the hoax? The vast academic-enviromental complex? Hoax implies a well-constructed like for an ulterior motive. What's the ulterior motive?

All the data points to a rapidly warming earth, and it's the SPEED with which this warming is taking place that makes this period of warming different from any that has occurred in the past. This is unprecedented, especially when you consider that according to global temperature cycles, we should be in a long-term cooling trend right now.

The more salient data point is the total atmospheric concentration of CO2. The last time the percentage of CO2 was this high was 70 million years ago, and sea levels then were 70 feet higher than today. Temperature change lags behind this metric.

Unfortunately, we ain't seen nothin' yet. Just wait until the frozen methane (10 times the greenhouse gas CO2 is) trapped beneath the deep oceans begins to melt and makes its way to the surface.

And Anon 2:27 must have dropped out of school before he took any science classes. There are a myriad of ways scientists can determine both global temperature levels and concentrations of atmospheric gasses going back hundreds of millions of years with a high degree of confidence.

@bird...how do you not know who benifits? Who do you think is paying these scientists to convince us that global warmimg is real? Do you really think that these scientists are going to tell tell the truth that its all false....no more government money.In the end its all so the government can implement a "carbon tax" on every single living human being for the evil of living on this earth and our sin of contributing to "global warming."

So, Scott, "climate change/global warming" is a US government conspiracy designed to allow them to implement increased taxes through regulation and some type of carbon impact assessement? And to do this they've enlisted scientific and academic institutions world-wide that are credible enough to have their research believed by a vast majority of the scientific community, yet dishonest enough to sell out their integrity for government funding? Sure, that may be viable on a small scale, as when tobacco companies would fund research to show that smoking and lung cancer were unrelated, but it seems like a less viable plan on a global scale.

That's what I'm interpreting from what you are saying, but I want to be far if I'm mischaracterizing what you said. Please feel free to correct me.

It is a worldwide conspiracy of the left to make everyone on the planet equal, equally miserable. Everyone knows academia is in the left's pocket. They get paid to fudge the numbers, and its been proven that's exactly what they are doing.

Your prophet, Al Gore, is heavily invested in the carbon trading market. If the left succeeds in forcing the carbon tax on us, ole Al Gore will be a billionaire.

If global warming is discredited, then all those scientist will be out of a job, so of course they find what they need to find and ignore the facts that the Earth has not warmed for decades, and yes, the Earth was much warmer in the past, most recently in the 1500's. Guess it was all the oil lamps they were burning, right?

The biggest problem people like Mr. Menzel have with their paranoid fantasy about a vast conspiracy to deceive the world about climate change is that, in his ultra-conservative world, "the government" is funding all this research that has 98% of all scientists agreeing with the data that points to a rapidly warming planet, higher concentrations of CO2, rising sea levels, etc.

In fact, "the government" funds little if any of this research, which he would know if he actually knew ANYthing about this issue.

If there is any conspiracy at all, it lies with the big multi-national energy companies which have paid shills to keep this "debate" alive with pseudo-science and false information distributed and championed by the right-wing-echo-chamber and the politicians it supports. It's been going on for more than 30 years now. Three decades of obfuscation and denial which have probably cost us the chance to do something meaningful to slow down the changes and mitigate the impact on our societies.

The UN's IGPC analysis only extends to the last 135 years....a pimple on the earth's climate history. There was indeed a Medieval Warm Period where the temperatures were warmer than in the last 8,000 years. It lasted from the end of the 9th century to the beginning of the 14th.And there was a Little Ice Age in the 1600's.There was a cooling period as recently as 1940 through the 1970's when we were warned of a catastrophic coming ice age.

Even the IGPC has been forced to revise its predictions...downgrading warming it expected in the 30 years following 1995 to 0.5C. Indeed the so called "hottest year" (of the the past 135 only)can not be determined because 2005, 2010 and 2014 all fall within the margin of error by a factor of five. And the reason the years are all close together is because...duh..climate is a continuous process of incremental change. The warmer years are grouped together just as the coolest years are.

The "pause" in global warming has lasted 16, 19 or 26 years depending on whether you chose surface temperatures or satellite records of the lower atmosphere to measure. and the people who make money off of climate scaremongering are panicked.They have seen it coming. Remember Phil Jones of the Univ. of East Anglia who wrote to another scientist in an email he thought would never see the light of day "the scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I admit the world had cooled since 1998."

Since the pause which has been pointed out by many scientists for the last 10 years can no longer be denied the Al Gore lobby has come up with 40 different explanations for it including cooling sulfate particles from China, an excess of volcanic emissions, a slowdown of magnetic activity in the sun and lately that the oceans are absorbing the heat.

The climate has and will always be changing. And there are plenty of scientists who don't believe in man made global warming that you have to look for because the media will not cover them.William Gray, Professor emeritus of Colorado State University says the computer models of the Climate Hysterics had hugely exaggerated any man made component in temperature rise. He estimates even the small rise that did occur in the late 70's to 90's is only at most 5% attributable to CO2. The rest was natural.

Man made global warming continues to be one of the biggest hoaxes in human history. Perpetrated by people making money off of it and by people who want bigger government and global wealth redistribution. Fortunately fewer and fewer people believe it each year and those that do are looking sillier and sillier.

The problem with all of this stuff on climate change is that it comes from liberal sources. Every liberal I've ever known is into 'group think' - they all think exactly alike. They are reinforced in this narrow herd and it's very difficult for them to think outside their peer group. So I'm a skeptic not because of any objection to science - but a skeptic because of experience with liberals.

The problem with all of this stuff against climate change is that it comes from conservative sources. Every conservative I've ever known is into 'group think' - they all think exactly alike. They are reinforced in this narrow herd and it's very difficult for them to think outside their peer group. So I'm a skeptic not because of any objection to science - but a skeptic because of experience with conservatives.

Yeah, I'm going to follow your link to some bogus graph made with crayons. LOL. I can make up graphs too.

What difference does it make if the earth was warmer at some point in history due to other causes? It still does not disprove that the current trend is most likely due to human activity and pollution. Will the earth still be here? Of course! Will we be able to live here anywhere near as easily and painlessly as we do today? No way. That's what you knuckledragger Teabaggers don't get. Too much money tied up in fossil fuel stocks to admit reality.